On my first session after a long time off, or my first session with really different gear or conditions than I'm used to, it helps me to relax and ease into it. I take lots of "tuning breaks" to rest and adjust harness lines, rig tension, etc., and just to get my mental state more chill. Even when I'm in season shape, it only takes a few runs of "muscling it" on out of tune gear to burn out the forearms.

All the damage is done waterstarting and getting going. Once in harness and footstraps I have total rest

Roll onto and climb over your board instead of using wind power. Then, hook in before trying to plane. Work on pushing against the boom. More downhaul will render the sail lighter but also lose some drive, find a happy medium.

Make sure your harness lines are precisely balanced. Even if they are a little off, it's like doing 100 1lb curls.

+1, technique, settings and choice of gear, very important.

boardsurfr wrote:

manuel wrote:

Muscular exercises may give you 10% improvement while technique 90% !

I mostly agree. But when switching to full suits, thicker suits, or using mittens/gloves there is definitely a "getting used to" aspect, too. Not that that's an issue in Cabarete

Very true ! I have also sailed many years in total crapness!!! Wearing mitts, hoodies, booties, kayak jackets and all kinds of cold weather gear! Dirt windsurfing can be very hard on forearms (no harness) over thick grass. I tried using downslopes and just walk uphill when I needed !_________________*NEW* - Manu's Windsurfing Blog, The STORE!

As others have said what matters is to have a balanced sail/harness-lines set up. When you are hooked in you should be able to sail without touching the boom in flat water, and use your arms only to balance the sail in any water condition. It should be effortless.

Going to the gym, bike trialing, curling your couch, or picking your nose instead of setting up your rig correctly is kind of useless ... you won't be able to duplicate the effort induced by the incorrectly set up rig and you will just get beefier in other muscle groups, or induce some disgust on the beach if you insist on picking your nose

Even when I rode desert bikes at race speeds 3-5 days a week, my forearms still caught fire at the beginning of each real race. We had 150 advanced and expert riders
• lined up side by side,
• facing a wide swatch of land narrowing within a few hundred yards into an untracked largely virgin course marked only by swatches of surveyors tape,
• engines off,
• awaiting the START signal (one was an outhouse we were told simply to watch*), at which time we'd
• start our bikes,
• dump the clutch at full throttle in first gear,
• drag race our open class bikes flat out,
• shifting up at full throttle without using the clutch,
• top out near 100 mph,
• hoping to beat 149 riders to the head of the trail so they wouldn't get in our way and we wouldn't be eating their dust.

* The race sponsors just said "You'll know when it's time to go". Sure enough, we had no doubts when the dynamite in the outhouse went off.

There's a highly relevant point in all this reminiscing. Despite being in top riding form, my forearms caught fire during that drag race. I had to hang on fiercely because the terrain was usually insane and my modified 500 cc 2-stroke Maico was a freaking BEAST, so my forearms pumped up with lactic acid. Sometimes the acid won (i.e., I had to back off or lose my grip entirely), other times I won (i.e., I gutted it out until we reached the trail where skill trumped horsepower.) From that point on my forearms were fine because I was now consuming that lactic acid as an energy source and wasn't at constant full throttle.

Translation: Maybe your pain could be much reduced if you took it easier initially, then more gradually eased into that first session with a lighter grip so the lactic acid wouldn't spike to such high levels. Titrate your level of effort by what your forearms dictate.

With practice, low-viscosity tranny oil for clutch-free shifts, aviation fuel to prevent preignition, and good clutch control, Maicos would start already in first gear, at full throttle ... a great example of point and shoot. Weight forward, point, start, dump the clutch, hang on for dear life, and kick the shifter up whenever you feel the next gear will be advantageous.

Then after the race, put normal oil in the transmission to protect it from excess wear.

That's completely off topic, but DAMN ... I just miss desert riding all over southern Utah SO much.

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